Abdulrahman Al-Lahim
Recent reports suggest that the Shoura (Consultative) Council will discuss a bill to allow women to be able to apply for a passport without requiring the consent of her guardian. We do not know what will be the opinion of the group of people who block this legislation for women. They dropped the anti-harassment law and expressed negative positions on some of the legislations related to national unity. But if we assume that this particular group of opposition will accept this decision and receives the Shoura approval, it would not solve the problem of women needing their guardian’s approval to travel.
This guardian may be her son, who has not reached the age of 20. Access to the passport does not mean access to the right to travel, where women need the consent of their male guardian every time she has to travel somewhere and pass through Passports Control at airports, even if she possesses a passport in her pocket because it would be suspended until further notice.
I think it is important that we do not give women hope and have them living in a quick dream that they wake up from into bitter reality. Instead we should head directly to confront the fundamental problem, which is not limited to the inability of women to get a passport, but the inability to travel solely as men do and be treated as human beings, not as a minor or someone with no legal capacity. This is in violation of international agreements that the Kingdom has voluntarily signed and ratified, particularly the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which includes discrimination in granting their inherent right to travel.
There are a lot of parents who abuse the guardianship of women and prevent them from traveling without any justification, except that the father wants to exercise his lust for power to prevent his adult daughters in retaliation and revenge on their mother, who may have been successful in obtaining a divorce, or hijacked his right to child custody. Then girls become the victims, and have to pay the price of living under virtual house arrest. Or the father can abuse his guardianship right to prevent them from traveling and this negatively impacts on their mother, who cannot travel without her daughters, especially if they are residing with her. Then she is punished by extension, and the authoritarian guardian succeeds in punishing the ex-wife, who survived and earned freedom from his abusive guardianship.
There are heart-wrenching stories of pain about this type of authoritarian guardianship. Offices of lawyers and different courts are full of these stories. We must confront this bravely, even though it will anger some people, because the future of the country comes first.
